As with the first day of most things, it almost always involves an introduction of some sort. After I walked the huge hike to work, I arrived at about 8:00, thirty minutes ahead early than the scheduled time. I guess I gave myself too much extra time.

Once the meeting got started, all the interns each got their paperwork sorted out. Since most people there came from other parts of the European Union, their paperwork seemed to be much simpler. After they sorted out the paperwork, they issued me my employee badge.

Afterward, I met other members of my department and one of the PhD students introduced me to their MEMS research project. Seeing that I knew next to nothing about this field of research, I will most likely need to do lots of background reading.

For lunch, employees don’t bring their own lunch. Many visit the cafeteria, or canteen as they call it, to buy food. Since I am an intern, I get discounts on lunch. For a 2.80 euro meal with pasta, salad and soup, it only cost me 1.10 euro. What an amazing deal. That is even cheaper than me buying all the ingredients and cooking it myself. Looks like I will have to stuff my face during lunch so I don’t have to bother cooking that much! Yes I am quite lazy when it comes to cooking.

I spent the rest of the day reading some Wikipedia articles on manufacturing processes in MEMS and attending to some introductory business, like obtaining my time card, and going through computer safety rules. Reading those Wiki articles already seemed kind of overwhelming since technical articles on Wiki are almost always written for an expert to read. But luckily, on my way out, I found the logbook from the previous intern, which should be extremely helpful.